Cold storage facilities and meat processing plants are ideal environments for spreading the virus.
Evidence shows that food is an unlikely route for cross-border transmission of the coronavirus, but contaminated items are still in the spotlight, deepening uncertainty over whether the $ 220 billion cold chain industry could be implied in ‘ the distribution of Covid-19.
China has repeatedly found traces of the pathogens on packaging and food, raising fears that imported items have been linked to recent virus resources in Beijing and the port city of Dalian. In the nation’s strongest action since it began testing food in June, a major Chinese city on Sunday banned imports of frozen meat from coronavirus hotspots.
Cold storage facilities and meat processing plants are ideal environments for spreading the virus, as the pathogen thrives in cold and dry environments. But there has been no concrete evidence that the virus can be transmitted through food, and experts continue to doubt that it is a major threat.
“We know that viruses can usually survive if they are frozen. That means in theory that it is possible for infection to spread in this way,” said Benjamin Cowling, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong. “But in reality, there is a very low risk that that would happen because so many steps need to be involved.”
The virus would freeze to survive and then disappear. It would be necessary to get someone’s hands and then into the nose or their mouth, and still survive. “I don’t think it would be a frequent mode of transfer, but it is possible,” he said.
China’s top expert on respiratory disease, Zhong Nanshan, who advises Beijing on its Covid-19 response, downplayed the role that frozen foods may play in transmission. “It is relatively rare to detect the virus from imported frozen foods,” he said. “Let’s not exaggerate.”
Guangzhou Ban
Amid a lack of definitive evidence, China is taking precautionary measures, causing major violations with its trading partners. The cold chain association of the southern coastal city of Guangzhou of China ordered all member companies to suspend imports of frozen meat and seabirds from coronavirus hotspots.
The order was issued after the local government in the nearby city of Shenzhen found the virus on a surface sample of chicken wings imported from Brazil. Hong Kong has also stopped imports of that plant.
China has otherwise refused broad national movements against imported meat because of its people’s reliance on the food source.
New Zealand originally considered the possibility that a new cluster, which suddenly emerged after 102 days last week without a local virus case, could be linked to a cold storage facility, as the first person to test positive working at an Auckland Americold facility.
Rule out
But preliminary findings from environmental tests at the plant have disproved the theory that the route of transmission through cool surfaces was on materials arriving from abroad, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said Tuesday.
“The full report will have the details, but it now seems clear that the possibility is ruled out from that investigation,” he said.
An important unanswered question is whether the traces that China has discovered on the packaging and surface of frozen foods are still viable and infected, or that they are simply dead and harmless remnants of the pathogen.
“What we know in public and what we have seen so far is that yes this virus can survive until people a few days outside humans, depending on the environment,” said Sarah Cahill, officer for nutritional standards at the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the body responsible for the development of nutritional standards under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
“But what do we actually discover when we do these tests?” sei se. “Are we just looking for RNA, which simply means that this virus is no longer viable, or is that virus still an infectious agent?”
It is not uncommon for a large variety of viruses, bacteria and parasites to be transmitted through contaminated food. The WHO estimates that nearly one in 10 people in the world falls ill after eating contaminated food, leading to 420,000 deaths each year. Salmonella and the norovirus when produced as uncooked meat and seafood can cause symptoms such as diarrhea and inflammation in the stomach and intestines.
While diarrhea may be one of the symptoms of Covid-19, experts are also more focused on the possibility of the virus jumping from surfaces to human respiratory systems when people touch their faces after coming in contact with an infected article. Even then, some consider that scenario far-fetched.
“Theoretically, it is possible,” Takeshi Kasai, the WHO’s regional director for the Western Pacific region, said in an online briefing on Tuesday. “But so far, our observations are like the evidence from the past seven months of epidemiology: it is unlikely.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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